


Steve Rogers and the Cardinal Werewolf

by DaneofSpades



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, M/M, Memory Loss, Misunderstandings, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:41:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaneofSpades/pseuds/DaneofSpades
Summary: The Hogwarts AU that this sub is sorely missing.A mysterious attack has left the school of Hogwarts without a headmaster, and a series of disappearances plague the school's teaching staff. Natasha Romanoff, head of the Auror Office and former classmate of Steve Rogers, appears in the dead of night to ask Steve for help. But after a horrible accident years earlier, Steve had returned to the muggle world and hasn't touched his wand since. Can he overcome his past and solve the mystery before it's too late, or will the ghost of his mistake force him back into hiding?Complete with a full cast of Marvel MCU professors, misunderstandings, small kernels of love, and villainy to boot.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Steve Rogers and the Cardinal Werewolf

Chapter One

“Eviction notice,” the sign on his front door read. Steve stared at the blocky, informal lettering and felt his shoulders cave into his chest. If only his Hogwarts classmates could see him now; a fully-grown wizard gazing blankly at a distinctly muggle problem.

Natasha would likely turn him around, one hand on her hip and the other prodding him firmly in the chest. “Just Charm the landlord, Steve, you were always good at that. Some might say even better than me. I wouldn’t say it, but some might.”

Sam would probably walk him right past the sign and down the stairwell. “Get some fresh air, Steve, don’t go in there for a while. The last thing you need right now is to sit down and mope, because I know the second you walk through that door, you’re gonna feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. You’re gonna feel like you failed. But you didn’t, Steve, you were just unlucky.”

Clint would give him a wry smile and fire off an anecdote at him, something like “You miss every shot you don’t take, kid. Course, in my experience, you don’t miss every shot you _do_ take, so maybe not the best advice in this situation. Did I do that metaphor right?” Then, with Steve thoroughly confused but successfully distracted, the two of them would head off to the nearest pub and get sloshed.

Tony would immediately offer him a bedroom in his penthouse, no questions asked. But, then again, he would probably berate Steve about his choices every day after he moved in. “Steve, why are you still chasing after muggles? They have their problems, we have ours. No amount of humanitarian work, magical or otherwise, is going to change that. So, sit down, Obliviate that part of your brain that has feelings, and get some real work done.”

Steve smiled into the nape of his peacoat and let himself chuckle at his friends. “Is that what you did, Tony?” he said to himself. He sighed out a breath and let it ruffle the paper stuck to his door. It was only paper. Paper and rules. And paper and rules hadn’t gotten him anywhere in the last 7 years.

He fingered his wand, stashed securely in the inside pocket of his coat, and for the first time in a long time considered going back. Back to the pure wonder of it, the simplicity, the easy fixes that magic offered.

Imagine how much good he could do, with a few well-placed spells? No more staying up all night, trying to find obscure laws that made it illegal for companies to lay down pipes on Indian reservations. No more shouting himself hoarse at democratic rallies while dodging tear gas cannisters. No more lobbying for universal healthcare and universal basic income. He could just palm his wand in his hand, walk up to the Capitol, and magic some sense into these people that supposedly “ran the country.” Then they could fight his battles for him, and maybe even change something for once.

“Our problems are so much bigger, Steve,” his friends would all say. “Why can’t you bring the fight to your own front door?”

He stared at said door, released the hand that was gripping his wand, and used it to tear the eviction notice clean off. “Bigger problems, bigger solutions,” he said angrily, and ripped the paper to shreds.

The muggles didn’t have anyone fighting for them. And there were a lot more of them then there were wizards. Why couldn’t they see that? The muggles were the ones who determined the way of the world, not wizards.

Steve sighed, and let the remains of his eviction notice tumble out of his fingers. Maybe he was just kidding himself. Maybe he just couldn’t go back, after what had happened. And from that idea, like a siphon of steam leaking from a kettle, escaped the briefest of thoughts of his best friend.

Bucky would know what to do. Well, the old Bucky would. “Steve, you’ve always had a heart too big for your chest,” he would say. “Especially when it was literally too big for your chest!” He’d laugh that raucous laugh that would always bring a smile to Steve’s face. “They had to shove it back in ya, when you were smaller than a pigmy puff. You survived that, didn’t you? And now look at you! Bigger than a damn Horntail and built like one too. This is nothing.”

But… Bucky was different now. They all were. Who knew what his friends were doing now, 7 years after graduating?

“But only one of them was your fault,” Steve said, and hung his head. Moisture threatened the corners of his eyelids.

“Moping it is, Sam,” Steve grumbled, and finally opened the door to his apartment.

It was dark inside, and dingy as ever. Stacks of books cluttered his kitchen table, accompanying a lone bowl of Campbell’s soup on the counter. The soup was half-eaten, its stale scent pervading the space and mixing unpleasantly with the mildew clinging to the wallpaper. A secondhand turntable and matching sofa were crammed in next to the kitchen, in what his landlord described as the “living room.” A dark stain streaked across the carpet leading to his bedroom.

Steve couldn’t help but laugh at his situation as he surveyed his living arrangement. Evicted from this? How pathetic could he get? He continued to laugh as he turned to lock the door but stopped abruptly when a sharp crack rang out behind him.

“You’ve lost your touch, Steve,” a woman’s voice said. Steve cringed and let his muscles relax from tightening at the sound, before slowly turning to face his visitor.

“Not even trying to reach for your wand,” Natasha said, from her position of sitting on Steve’s countertop. Her own wand was pointing at his chest, lazily dangling from her fingertips. “You’ve gotten even softer than I thought possible. And I once saw you hand-stitch a muggle’s Beanie Baby on the tube.”

“She ripped it on her way to school…” Steve mumbled, taking off his gloves and walking towards his bedroom. He didn’t want her to see the way his hands were shaking.

“That doesn’t answer the question of how you know how to sew!” Natasha called after him. “With your bare hands!” Steve ignored her in favor of changing out of his coat and pants, stuffing his work clothes distractedly back into his dresser.

No contact for months—years in the case of some of his friends—and now the head of the Auror office shows up unannounced in his apartment? He didn’t have any inkling of how she knew where he lived, but as Natasha always said, she was ‘in the business of knowing things.’

She also usually only visited him once a year, and never under these circumstances. Their current arrangement was more public; she knew exactly where and when she would find him, and he knew to expect her with flowers in hand. She had never done anything like this since he left.

His gaze led him unconsciously to the top of his dresser. His mother’s portrait stared back at him, but his eyes canted down just to the left of the image, where a different picture frame was laid face down.

“Unrelated,” Steve said, and nodded. His mother smiled sadly at him from her frame.

When he came back to the kitchen, now dressed more comfortably in sweatpants and a t-shirt, Natasha was drinking out of the soup bowl he had left on the counter. Her wand tracked his movements around the room and he rolled his eyes at her.

“That’s not very sanitary,” he said, placing himself in one of the rickety chairs lining the counter. Steam was rising from the bowl, so he assumed she had transfigured the soup into something edible just to mess with him. “And in my defense, I did magic the needle and thread. I’m not that out of touch with the Wizarding World.” He didn’t clarify to her that that particular instance of magic was performed over 7 years ago.

Natasha put down the bowl, now clearly filled with fresh French onion soup, and looked at him with disapproval.

“Yes. Out of thin air, you conjured a needle and thread,” she said. “And not only that, but you placed an Unbreakable Charm on it, so that her precious, $5 toy would never become damaged again. Tell me Steve, how can someone with talent like that waste it with such blatant disregard for its use?”

“I saw someone who needed help.” Steve shrugged. “So I helped.”

“So you always used to say.” Natasha sighed. She jumped down gracefully from the countertop and began rummaging through his fridge. “And what would you say if I said I was the one who needed help?”

That statement caught Steve’s curiosity. Even though her face was partially hidden in the confines of his fridge, he thought he recognized a frission of tension in the muscles of Natasha’s neck.

He couldn’t recall a time Natasha had specifically asked for help. She had certainly coerced him, bribed him, and forced him (usually in that order) to assist her in her schemes, but never outright asked.

There was that one time with the Erumpent when she had, quite memorably, said “would you help me with this, goddammit!” but Steve didn’t think that counted. She was, after all, riding said Erumpent down the 3rd floor outside the Charm’s corridor and warranted said help, but this quiet admission was altogether different.

Natasha straightened, a plastic container of lettuce in her hands, and turned to look at him. “This is three weeks old,” she said.

“I’m not in my apartment very often.”

“Clearly, seeing as that eviction notice has been taped to your door for four days. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”

“So instead you charmed my doorknob and waited for me like some kind of ambush bug.”

“I prefer spider.”

“I prefer not being treated like some kind of prey in this scenario.”

“You’re the one who elected into the insect metaphors.”

“And you’re the one voted ‘most likely to eat her victims’ in 7th year.”

Natasha cocked her head at him and smiled. “God, I missed this,” she said, now beaming at him. She extended her hands out to him and made a gesturing motion.

Steve made a huffing noise at her but knew he had a similarly dopey smile pasted on his face. He went willingly into the hug, but still squeezed a bit harder than was necessary. Weirdly he felt her lean more significantly into his right side, pressing lightly but intently at the pocket in his sweats where his wand now resided. When he leaned out of the embrace, Natasha’s face was no longer smiling.

“Fury is dead,” she said, looking closely at him while she spoke the words. No preamble, nothing to soften the blow, and Steve sat down hard. “Well, we think he’s dead,” Natasha continued, oblivious to the distress she had caused.

She continued to talk over him, but none of the words quite made it through the wall of grief his mind had thrown up. Memories of his old headmaster were thrown up like a canvas over his vision: their first encounter, outside of a class of Defense Against the Dark Arts, when Steve had run out screaming after being confronted with a boggart posing as his dead mother. The walks they used to take along the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, discussing whether or not Steve had the courage to become an Auror. When Fury had consoled him after his biggest failure, saying that nothing was permanent. That last thought was enough to jar him back to the present.

“Wait,” Steve said, “You only think so?”

Natasha stopped mid-sentence and looked at him. Her eyes traced over his face, clearly taking in his maudlin expression, and she cleared her throat awkwardly.

“Erm, yes,” she stuttered, looking uncomfortable. “Although there wasn’t any… evidence, per say.”

Steve looked back at her, confused and still somewhat teary-eyed.

“A body,” Natasha said, “there wasn’t one. More of a crater and dust-pile situation.” Steve blanched.

“Not that that’s a bad thing!” Natasha said hurriedly. “You know how he is. That man could get hit with an Unforgiveable Curse and somehow come out of it better off than he was before. Pretty sure he used to tell me that story over breakfast, if I’m remembering it right.”

Steve took a deep breath and tried to remind himself that these things were normal back in the life he used to live. Wizards could survive things like car accidents and house fires, and even sometimes deaths and dismemberments.

“Ok,” Steve said, standing up from his chair and bracing himself against the counter. Natasha looked at him warily. “I’m ok,” he said again. “It’s just been awhile.”

Natasha came over to him and patted his shoulder awkwardly. She had done this enough times that Steve guessed she was literally counting out the number of seconds she deemed appropriate for a comforting response. Steve looked up and her and managed a small smile to let her know the message had been received. She continued patting him for a few more seconds, then walled her face off once more and stepped back, as though reminded of something.

Natasha waved her wand once and the shutters covering his kitchen windows snapped shut. She muttered something that Steve vaguely recalled as an Anti-Apparition Charm, and then unceremoniously pointed her wand straight at him. Steve stood up a little straighter and raised his eyebrows, his sadness instantaneously replaced with apprehension.

“Now,” Natasha began, “Before I tell you anything confidential, for security reasons I need to know that it’s really you. Not that I doubt you’ve been holed up in Haringey, walking nans across streets and giving sweets to orphans.”

Steve crossed him arms across his chest and let some of the sudden tension leak out of him. “You do realize you’ve been doing this since 5th year,” he said, exasperated. “I spent too long in the loo once after Herbology and you spent the next 5 minutes thinking I had been drugged and replaced by Bradley Herder.”

“Yes, well, in my defense he _was_ stalking me at the time. I thought that that was his way of stepping up his game when it came to asking me to the Yule Ball.”

“I was asking you as a friend!”

“Still a weird thing to think about while taking a shit. I was right to be suspicious.”

“Only you could be that serious about anything.”

“Yes,” Natasha answered, “Deathly serious.” She sighed, but Steve noticed that the grip on her wand had tightened. “Steve, do I really think you’re a Hydra plant? No. It’s one of the main reasons I’m here, in fact: because I think I can trust you. I just need to make sure.”

Steve opened his mouth to interject but Natasha beat him to it.

“No,” she said, “It isn’t enough that you know about Bradley Herder.”

“I was going to ask when it was that you decided I would help you.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Steve.”

“Fine,” Steve said, waving his hands around in annoyance. “Ask away.”

“Steve,” Natasha said, “What is the name of your mother’s favorite flower?”

He wasn’t expecting the question, but he supposed it was the most appropriate one to ask. He and Natasha had seen each other exactly once per year since his departure, on the anniversary of his mother’s death. It was Natasha’s way of checking up on him. In her words it was to “make sure he was still alive,” but Steve knew it ran deeper than that.

The first time Natasha had shown up at his mother’s grave was 7 years ago. It was October 15, 2002, and she had brought a bouquet of tulips in her arms. Steve himself had brought Chrysanthemums, and the only thing he was able to say that day was that they were his mother’s favorite flower. The only thing Natasha had said was ‘when are you coming back?’

Each year after that, she had visited him at his mother’s grave. Each time, she asked him when he was going to come back. The only difference was that after that first year, she brought chrysanthemums too.

“Chrysanthemums,” Steve answered, shaking himself out of his memory.

Natasha nodded, a sad smile lingering on her face. However, somewhat ruining the moment, it didn’t escape Steve’s notice that she had made no effort to undue either spell she had cast on his apartment.

“Correct,” she said, once again all business. “Now you ask me something.”

Steve couldn’t help but press a hand into his forehead in annoyance. “Natasha,” he griped, “If you were really a Hydra agent in disguise, I’m pretty sure I’d be dead already. Like you said, I haven’t even tried to reach for my wand during this whole conversation.”

“Yes, which is concerning in its own right!” Natasha said, jabbing her wand at him to punctuate her words. Steve edged a bit to the right to be out of the line of fire.

“It’s not something I think about anymore!” Steve snapped.

“Yeah, well you better start thinking about it again, Steven Grant Rogers, or me coming here is going to turn out to be a huge waste of time.”

Steve defiantly shoved his hand into his sweatpants and pulled out his wand. It felt a bit awkward in his hand, and Steve realized with a start how long it had been since he’d held it like this. Nonetheless, he aimed it resolutely at Natasha’s forehead and said, “What was the first thing you ever said to me?”

“You think you’re better than me?” Natasha said coolly, in response to his question. The air shimmered slightly above her perfectly coiffed red hair. She had cast a nonverbal Shield Charm the second his hand had gone into his pants. Steve couldn’t help but be impressed.

“Absolutely not,” he said smartly, and laid his wand down on the countertop as a gesture of goodwill. He had felt acutely uneasy when his palm had touched the wood, like he was holding a rattlesnake that could strike at any moment, and breathed a sigh of relief when it finally left his hand. Natasha’s ears seemed to perk up at the sound, but Steve was grateful she chose not to comment. He wasn’t ready to open up that discussion just yet.

“Good,” Natasha said, but she made no move to place down her wand down next to his. She did, however, take a seat at his wobbly countertop. “Now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, I think it’s safe to tell you what happened to our dear old headmaster.”

“I’ll get the kettle going,” Steve said, mostly as a joke, but Natasha had already launched into her story. A trace of fondness crept into his face. And while Steve went about gathering the necessary materials for tea, his friend described to him what she had been doing the night of Fury’s disappearance.

\---

“I was staying late at the Auror’s office,” she began, “Working on a particularly tricky case involving an Animagus that has been prowling the London sewer system disguised as a Crocodile.

“Quite the case,” Natasha continued, nodding to herself, “The crocodile is targeting muggles specifically, surfacing once every 13 days and eating only 19-year-olds. It’s almost like it has a thing for prime numbers, you know? Like that bike race on Spring Bank Holiday, that had exactly 157 participants, and it killed only 5…” Natasha trailed off, her gaze unfocused for a moment. She blinked and looked back at Steve, who huffed at her.

“Because Spring Bank was on the 31st this year?”

“Yes,” Steve said, slightly irritated. “Murders and math. Very interesting, I’m sure you’ll nail it. Can we get back to the topic at hand?”

Natasha hummed and eyed him in amusement before continuing.

“At around 2:00am in the morning,” she said, “I heard a gust of wind blow by my southeast window. This was strange enough to make me draw my wand, seeing as the Ministry is underground and the windows are just for show.”

“That and you’re trigger happy,” Steve added.

“The next moment,” she persisted, ignoring him, “a Patronus in the form of a peregrine falcon burst into my office and landed on my desk.”

“Fury’s,” Steve said.

“Naturally. But it only said one sentence: ‘A werewolf sleeps in Argolis.’ No mention of an assassination attempt and nothing about a break-in either. I had to learn about Hogwarts’ security breach from Sam, who apparently had also received a message from Fury.”

“A werewolf?” Steve asked, confused. “A literal werewolf?”

“Who knows?” Natasha answered. “And who knows why Fury sent that message to me, specifically? The Patronus he sent to Sam, telling him about the break-in, was also received by 10 other Aurors. But I was singled out.”

“Argolis…” Steve muttered. He had never heard of the place.

“It’s apparently somewhere in Greece,” Natasha said. “Not that that is any help.”

Steve shrugged, removing the kettle from the heat and placing two cracked porcelain cups on two equally shabby saucers.

“He was always cryptic,” Steve said.

“He was always pig-headed, you mean.” She accepted a cup of Earl Gray from Steve gratefully. “But pig-headed or not, he was undoubtedly attacked in his office that night. Both stone gargoyles that stand guard over his office were blown to pieces, and the door had clearly been cursed. The first Auror that touched it had his hand burned clean off.”

“To prevent Fury from escaping?” Steve asked.

“Or to prevent something else from getting in,” Natasha said darkly. “There were also signs of a struggle on the stairs, and…” Natasha took a deep breath. “Clint was found unconscious outside of Fury’s office. With a similar burn on his hand.”

“Is he ok?” Steve asked immediately, alarmed.

“Yes, yes, he’s fine,” Natasha said. “Very much fine,” Natasha said more strongly, when Steve opened his mouth to argue the point. “The real issue is that he doesn’t remember anything from that night. No idea what he was doing in the headmaster’s tower, no idea what had happened to Fury, not even certain what he had for dinner that night.”

“Obliviated?” Steve asked.

“Or Imperiused. I don’t see a reason for whoever attacked Fury to remove information regarding Clint’s dinner from his head. However, my office is taking the position that we cannot remove him as a suspect.”

“What?” Steve choked on his tea. “He’s a teacher! Why would a teacher want to attack Fury?”

“It’s true, I agree that a motive would be difficult to pinpoint in his case, but he was found at the scene of the crime…”

“Unconscious!” Steve interrupted angrily.

“But with a burn on his hand,” Natasha said. “If someone was already in Fury’s office, why would he try to break into it?”

“To help!”

“But what if Fury had cast the spell to prevent Clint from getting in?”

“Then you were right, and he was cursed. And whoever cursed him was using him to get into the office.”

“But that suggests that Fury knew already that Clint was a threat. Think about it. Would Fury’s first reaction to Clint Barton, his friend and colleague, be to curse him the moment he knocked on his door?”

“I… I suppose not,” Steve said, though not with much confidence.

“Then you see the problem,” she said gravely. “This whole thing has gotten quite complicated, Steve, though I don’t like admitting it. And unfortunately, the number of people who lack alibis that night is a bit too long for my taste. Tony refuses to admit what he was doing when he found Clint’s body, and Thor has yet to be found anywhere on the castle grounds. Bruce helpfully offered to slip a vial of Veritaserum into Tony’s coffee the morning I arrived at the castle, but unfortunately such practices are still illegal.”

Steve was silent, mulling over the sudden flood of information. Clint he could completely excuse – he was the school’s flying instructor and didn’t have a bad bone in his body. Well, except for his ear-bones, but Steve honestly wasn’t sure if those were truly considered bones. He was still convinced that Clint was either cursed or trying his best to help, no matter what Natasha had said.

Tony was a somewhat different story. While they were in school together there were multiple incidents in which Tony had been threatened with expulsion. He once blew up half of the north tower in 6th year, testing a rocket propelled by transfigured broomsticks. The year after that he was disciplined for attempted transfiguration of multiple suits of armor, one of which went rogue and somehow managed to trap their herbology teacher within its breastplate. It was a wonder that he was ever hired to teach the subject, but Fury excused him after each incident. Steve was convinced that Fury brought Tony on to keep an eye on him. And to protect him from himself.

Though it was true that Steve and Tony had a rocky friendship at school, they ended on good terms. He was a narcissistic sociopath to a fault, but Steve doubted he would go so far as to attack Fury. That is, unless Fury was preventing him from working on a particularly dangerous project. Unlikely but possible, especially if Tony was convinced that said project was both revolutionary and necessary. And Natasha did say that he was refusing to admit to his intentions on the night in question. 

The fact that Thor seemed to be lost was also concerning. He was Steve’s Care of Magical Creatures teacher when he was still in school, and though he was intimidating at first, Steve soon discovered that most of his overbearing personality served a practical purpose. Outside of the borderline barbaric methods he used to wrangle the dangerous animals he worked with, Thor was a remarkably kind and gentle man.

“So,” Steve said thoughtfully, “Probably an outside job, then? If I know Clint he’s rarely inside the castle walls except for meals. If he was cursed like you said, it would’ve been on the castle grounds instead of within the actual building. Combine that with the fact that Thor, who lives right outside the Forbidden Forest, is missing, and signs point to someone getting into the castle from that route!” He looked at Natasha with excitement.

“Well summarized,” Natasha said, tilting her head at him. “Even though it doesn’t fully explain Clint’s burn. And it assumes he was cursed. But overall not a totally useless explanation.”

“Thanks,” Steve said, deadpan, his enthusiasm deflating instantly.

“You’re welcome,” Natasha answered without a trace of sarcasm. “I also happen to be assuming most of those things. If it makes you feel better, Clint is fairly low on my list of suspects. So let’s assume he was under the control of our perpetrator, why would they target Clint specifically?”

Steve thought hard at what made Clint unique while they were in school. He was undoubtedly a fantastic Chaser—of both Quaffles and women—but he wasn’t particularly skilled at magic. He spent most of his school days screwing off and playing practical jokes on people. He had once led Steve through a fake tapestry on the 3rd floor, claiming that it was a shortcut to the bathroom, only to have it try to strangle him the second he laid a hand on it. Of course, many of his other shortcuts did work; one of his favorite pastimes had been jumping out of various corners of the castle and scaring 1st years.

“Wait a second,” Steve said, breaking out of his thoughts. “Clint knows practically all the secret passages in and out of the castle.”

“Meaning…” Natasha said expectantly. 

“Meaning that whoever broke in could’ve also known that Clint would be able to sneak them into the castle undetected,” Steve said. “But how would they have known that about him?”

“A good point. It narrows down the suspect pool for sure.”

“So you’re saying that the person who attacked Fury knew Clint from when he was in school?”

“I’m not not saying that,” Natasha answered, a hint of smile creeping onto her face. “Guess I was right to come to you after all. You might have a muggle heart, but your brain is all Wizard.”

“Ok,” Steve answered, distracted enough to not really register the backhanded compliment. He rose from his chair and began to pace back and forth in his kitchen. “So Thor noticed someone coming out of the forest, accosted them, and was likely attacked. Driven away or killed, we don’t know. After dealing with Thor, they prowled around the grounds, probably looking for a way into the castle without being noticed, and found Clint. They cursed him, forced him to transport them into the castle and up to Fury’s office, after which they knocked him out. They attacked Fury, who was also either driven away or killed, and… and…” Steve stopped pacing and looked at Natasha.

“Wait, what did they want?” Steve asked.

Natasha’s face seemed to twitch just barely in response to his question.

“We don’t know, but whatever it was they didn’t get it,” Natasha said coolly. “Everything in Fury’s office is accounted for. The auror’s office’s official position is that it was an attempted assassination.”

“Official position?” Steve asked, suddenly suspicious. “As in synonymous with your personal position?”

“I was the one that wrote the report.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Your question assumes I write shitty reports,” Natasha said evasively.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Steve asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“All sorts of things, Steve,” she said lightly. “For instance, I haven’t told you that your tea has leaked all over your shirt.” Steve looked down and cursed, putting down the cracked cup he was holding and pawing uselessly at the mess on his chest. Natasha rolled her eyes at him and added, “I also haven’t told you that the police are coming here, tonight, to forcibly remove you from your home.”

Steve stopped his attempts to wring out his t-shirt and looked at her incredulously.

“Are you trying to change the subject?” he asked. 

“Yes, but I’m not lying either.”

“Natasha!” Steve warned, “If you want me to help you, you have to trust me.”

“And vise-versa,” Natasha said, and looked carefully at her watch. “They’ll be here in 5 minutes.”

“What. Aren’t. You. Telling. Me.” Steve said, voice shaking slightly. He stepped closer to Natasha with each word. She looked him up and down and raised a single eyebrow at him.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t particularly care,” Steve said, growing increasingly frustrated. “Since I have a feeling that not only did you time your arrival with that of the police, but you were the one who called them in the first place.”

“Not entirely inaccurate, though technically I had your neighbor call them. Domestic dispute and all that.”

“Oh!” Steve said, raising his voice. “So you were anticipating that I would literally chop your head off for being so difficult?”

“Don’t be crass, Steve, it was mostly going to be for destruction of property. Shorter jail sentence. Oh, speaking of which…” She pointed her wand at his living room and uttered a Blasting Curse in the direction of his sofa.

“Hey!” Steve yelled, as he watched his couch fly across the room and crash into his wall. Plaster rained down from the ceiling and he covered his head in alarm.

“You know,” Natasha said, twirling her wand across her fingers. “You yelling isn’t exactly an argument against beating your wife.”

“I don’t even have a wife!”

“What are you saying, that I don’t look like a damsel in distress?”

“No,” Steve said, striding over to the kitchen counter and snatching up his wand. He pointed it at Natasha threateningly and said, “You look like someone who is making it all but impossible for me not to leave my life behind and come to Hogwarts with you.”

“Congratulations, you figured it out. And you seemed to grow a pair in the process,” she said, nodding at him in approval.

“You are the most difficult person I have ever met!” Steve yelled, and in response Natasha sent another curse bounding across the room, this time aimed at his bookshelf. She looked at him expectantly, waited a moment, then shot one at his bedroom. A distant tinkle of glass accompanied the baleful crash of his dresser. Steve advanced towards her, outraged, but stopped short, wand quivering just slightly.

“So do something about it,” she said, sneering at him and preparing another spell, this time aimed at Steve.

“I can’t,” Steve said, the admission slipping out of his mouth like an expletive. He clamped his mouth shut and gritted his teeth. Natasha paused mid-curse, opened her mouth briefly, then closed it. Steve looked back at her as defiantly as he could muster, but he was sure she saw right through him.

“Really?” She asked. Steve remained silent. Natasha cocked her head, considering. Steve thought he could hear sirens in the distance.

Neither of them moved. An odd sensation, like someone’s gaze was burning a hole in the back of his head, suddenly overtook him. Steve turned his neck slightly towards his room as if to scratch an itch, but the feeling lingered.

Natasha slowly raised her wand, pointed it right at Steve’s face, and very clearly and deliberately said, “Diffindo.” Steve made no move to defend himself, but still felt himself flinch as the spell cut into his cheek.

“Oh, Steve,” Natasha said gently. He closed his eyes and hung his head. He felt a small trickle of blood slide down his neck.

“7 years,” he said, in response to the unanswered question that hung in the room like a noose. “It’s been 7 years since I’ve cast a spell. Not since St. Mungo’s. I… I still haven’t… I don’t trust….”

Natasha cursed and let her wand fall at her side. “Steve… If I had known I never would have—”

“It’s ok,” Steve said, cutting her off. He wiped the slow stream of blood off his face with his hand and finally raised his head to look at her. Natasha’s face was so openly heartbroken and apologetic that he was caught off guard. He shrugged, hoping that it was enough for her to know she was forgiven. 

“I was going to say I never would have come here.”

“And I will always say that I’m glad you did.” His statement echoed the conversation they had last fall, the last time they had seen each other.

They were sitting on the bench across from Sarah’s grave, watching the wind gently caress the pair of chrysanthemum wreaths that decorated her tombstone. Leaves softly tumbled from the boughs of the oak tree they sat under before disappearing into the darkening evening. Steve had been there since sunrise, Natasha arriving soon afterwards. It was at this point during their visits, when the sun had crept below the horizon and cast the final shadow over his mother’s grave, that Steve would finally be open to talking about her.

“She would be glad you’re here,” he would say. He would talk about her smile, and the way that it would always shine through the tiredness she felt at the end of the day. Or the way they would walk when he was younger, her hand wrapped tightly around his index finger as though pointing him in the right direction. Sometimes he would talk about his life with the muggles, and other times he would talk about their school days. Natasha wouldn’t say anything until he had finished.

It had been the same way before, when it had been Bucky, not Natasha, who would share this anniversary with him. When the sun fell Bucky would clasp his hand around the nape of Steve’s neck, pull gently upward, and that would be the signal to leave. Now, Steve had to find the strength to stand by himself. And when he finally did, hours after sunset, Natasha would always ask the same question: ‘when are you coming back?’

“I’m glad you’re here too,” Steve would say, before turning away from her and walking home alone. But on that walk home, Steve would always look to his righthand side. He would feel the memory of that hand that remained firmly on his neck and wonder if Bucky knew what day it was. Only then would he start crying.

“I’m sorry too, you know,” Steve said. He closed his eyes as the memory of those long walks were gradually subsumed under the weight of the present moment. “It was selfish of me to leave all of you behind. It wasn’t anything you did.”

“You could’ve said something,” Natasha said. She sniffed delicately and Steve reopened his eyes. If he didn’t know better he would think that she was crying. “That day at St. Mungo’s,” she continued bravely, not one tremor present in her voice, “None of us saw you leave.”

“The doctors said there was nothing they could do,” Steve admitted. It was the only time they had ever talked about that day. “When I heard that something in me… changed. Like I couldn’t be the person I used to be.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Steve,” Natasha said. It echoed hollowly around his empty apartment, just as it had echoed hollowly throughout the cavernous hallways of St. Mungo’s hospital.

“Yes,” he said simply. “It was.” Steve stood there, unseeing, as the sound of sirens intensified. He felt a sharp pain on his cheek and started, reflexively moving his fingers up to the cut on his cheek. He remembered how it got there and immediately felt ashamed. 

“Episkey,” Natasha said quietly, and Steve turned to look at her. As she walked back to his kitchen, Steve felt the skin in his cheek stretch and expand to stitch over the cut. She stopped at the kitchen table, faced Steve’s front door and waved her wand once. The sound of sirens ceased immediately. She then placed her wand onto the countertop, directly over the spot where his own wand had rested moments before. Even more surprising, she then came back to where Steve was standing in the living room and lightly kissed the skin that had just healed over his injury.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with a depth of feeling he had only heard from her a handful of times. “I’m sorry that I came here, and dragged you into this, and called the police, and pretended that you were physically assaulting me… Yeesh,” Natasha said, turning her back on him and wiping her hands ever so subtly across her eyes. “I’m a real piece of work, aren’t I?”

Steve would’ve tried to comfort her, but a hollow feeling lingered in his chest.

“What kind of friend would test you like that?” She laughed rather hysterically before hiccupping once, like she had choked on the sound. “I mean my God, I could’ve just asked instead of cutting your face open.” Steve had never seen her behave this way, and concern for his friend managed to force its way through the wall of apathy he had thrown up.

“Sometimes it’s hard to leave the job behind,” Steve said, finding his voice.

“Only you would defend me like that,” Natasha said, exasperated. She stopped wringing her hands and her eyes crinkled with emotion. “Heart like yours, it’s a wonder you ever thought you had the capacity to hurt someone.” Steve went to contradict her, but she threw a hand up to stop him.

“Save it, Steve,” she said tiredly. She walked over to the couch she had upended just moments before and sat down on it unceremoniously. She patted the spot next to her and tucked her feet up underneath herself. Steve eyed her for a moment before glancing at the front door. His gaze settled there, considering.

“I won’t stop you,” Natasha said. “I think we’re past the point of me asking for your help. But before you leave, I have a few things I want to say.”

Part of him wanted to ignore her. He could simply gather his things, keep his wand on the counter, and leave it all behind—permanently. But as soon as he considered it, he recognized that the part of him that wanted to leave was the same part that had taken hold of him at St. Mungo’s. A different part, one that he hadn’t acknowledged in quite some time, wanted him to stay. It was the part that sounded like the rustling of autumn leaves across the pavement. The part that smelled like chrysanthemums. The part that still felt like home.

“Ok,” Steve said, and he moved to join Natasha on the couch. It creaked under his weight, but he managed to cross his legs and face her.

“Thank you,” she said, reaching out for his hand and clasping it tenderly. “For not cutting me out of your life. But I miss you, Steve. Everyone does. And I know that that isn’t enough to get you to come back, but you deserve to hear it anyway. The only person that blames you for what happened is you.”

Steve could only nod mutely in response. Natasha brushed her hair out of her face and looked out of the window at the rain that had just begun to drizzle against the pavement. Steve followed her gaze and watched as the droplets crashed into the asphalt, aerosolizing the evening air. He inhaled deeply, letting the unique scent of it fill his nose.

Petrichor, Bucky had called it. Stone ichor. Steve had always thought it was a fitting appellation. A name for the earth bleeding out the sky.

“How is he?” Steve asked. He could feel Natasha’s surprise in the way her hand jumped in his, but he didn’t look away from the window.

“Happy, for the most part,” Natasha said. “St. Mungo’s had him go back to school. They hoped it would help him remember some things.”

“Did it?” Steve asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Some things, yes,” Natasha said evenly. “His ability to learn new information wasn’t damaged at all. He might be even better at Defense Against the Dark Arts than he was before.”

“That’s good to hear,” Steve said. If his voice broke on the words neither of them commented on it.

“He and Clint get along fairly well, actually.”

“I’m glad he made some friends at school.” His voice sounded hollow as it fogged up the glass, like a ghost passing across the window and into the night.

“I’ve talked to him quite a few times too,” Natasha said. “It’s weird. Sometimes it feels like he’s the same. Like he makes a joke you swear you’ve heard before, or you catch him reading the same books he used to read.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Steve said.

“What am I doing?” Natasha asked sweetly.

“Still can’t tell the truth, can you?” He looked away from the window and removed his hand from her grip. She mirrored the motion, matching his gaze and tucking her hand into her lap.

“He may not remember you, Steve, but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn to.”

“Are you done?” He asked, trying to drive a sense of finality into his words.

“Almost,” Natasha said softly. She looked back out of the window, where the rain had increased its cadence against the pavement. “That question you asked me, earlier. If I was hiding something from you.”

Steve blinked, remembering. Their argument seemed to have taken place so long ago. He had almost forgotten about the attack.

“Bucky made some different decisions this time,” she said. “After he graduated from Hogwarts.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Steve asked, dread growing in his stomach.

“He didn’t want to be an auror. Something tells me that he lacked the protective instinct that used to drive him.”

“Natasha, what are you saying?” Steve said, his voice rough. The rain suddenly sounded like a downpour in his head.

“He wanted to be a teacher. Hogwarts was all he knew. And after what happened, Fury wanted to keep a closer eye on him.”

“Natasha,” Steve warned.

“He was there that night,” she said fearfully.

“No,” Steve forced out, though it felt like he was choking on the words—like he was drowning. A deluge pounded against the window.

“Fury wasn’t the only one who was attacked.”


End file.
